Waxing Crescent (Alice Cullen x Bella Swan)

Chapter 23 - Baseball and Friends

As always, it was never easy leaving Bella. The only consolation? How peacefully she slept - blissfully unaware of my absconding. Any momentary discomfort and pain that I may feel, would never mark her. It was the only thing that made these necessary departures feel somewhat tolerable...

I followed my usual route through the woods, making sure to give the lesser known hiking trails just as much as the well-trodden ones a wide berth. You never knew when an adventurous night owl decided to tramp around all hours of the early morning.

It was good to see Charlie finally cheer up over these last few days. It had taken him weeks to fully reconcile with the loss of Weylan and forego using work as a crutch. He appeared to have this funny little habit of avoiding that which bothered him most. It was very human.

Bella resembled him so much. If it were not for her fierce stubbornness, and inability to leave things alone, I imagined that - excusing sex and mouth-watering beauty - she would be near indistinguishable from her father.

The day of her birthday had, despite the harrowing news of the day earlier, been a good one. Or as far as I could tell. Bella never indicated otherwise. 

As her birthday came to a close, I was even able to convince her that a bit of shopping was in fact a salve to the soul, as opposed to just consumerist gluttony! Oh the joy. Perhaps I should not have proceeded to tease her for such concessions? I got quite the slap on the wrist. However, I was not at all feeling admonished like she had hoped. Anything but, in fact.

Her ineffectual smacks, pinches, and pokes, always felt more like a kiss, anyway.

When we got home after securing her a dress, Bella even managed to get a hold of Charlie over the phone and we were able to return to her house and spend the night. 

He seemed to, as I was pleased to note upon arrival, corralled all of his courage and love for his daughter in order to give her a deservingly memorable night. It was not exactly to my tastes - pizza and a movie - but Bella was rather heartened by the whole thing. Naturally, that was enough for me. I realized then that I had been selfish. 

One of the reasons I wanted Bella out from under the shadow of Charlie's grief, was because I could not stomach her day being mired by something so disastrous as death. I was not sure Charlie had the strength to pull himself together. Bella was so precious and dear to me, that I could not tolerate that which would detract from her joy. 

In the end - and I was happy to do so - I had to admit that I had misjudged her Father. 

Charlie was a stronger man that I had originally given him credit - although, I could not have faulted him for his sorrow if it had indeed overflowed. 

Since that night, things had not been entirely smooth-sailing. 

My family understandably was on edge - all of us trying to do our part and contribute to a successful defensive strategy. We had to accept that there would have been no reasonable way to know, let alone protect Weylan, but it was still a fierce motivator nonetheless. We learned to tolerate it, but not accept it.

One thing we were all sure of was that the nomads were closing in. All of us were unwilling to permit another senseless death, and remained ever vigilant.

From the conversations I had with Charlie, and the snippets shared by Bella, his station was hard at work liaising with other counties. The current conception was that these so-called 'senseless killings' were some sort of strange animal attack, but numerous police officers had their misgivings about this line of thinking. Especially as the killings began to forge a pattern down through the state, making things seem not so senseless after all.